Author Archives: Drunken Librarian

Hilary Scheppers is a writer, artist, and poet. California | Minnesota | Colorado | New York

Excerpt from Quiet – Dave Eggers

I feel time like you dream. Your dreams are jumbled. You can’t remember the order of your dreams, and when you recall them, the memories bend. Faces change. It’s all in puddles and ripples. That’s what time is for me.

“I Won’t Abandon You” – Rivka Miriam

I won’t abandon you, the land said

clutching me

tight

the same way she spoke clutching the sea

just before being torn from it by force

A Careful Man Dies – Ray Bradbury

You sleep only four hours a night. You go to bed at eleven and get up at three and everything is clear as crystal. You begin your day then, have your coffee, read a book for an hour, listen to the faint, far, unreal talk and music of the predawn stations and perhaps go out for a walk, always being certain to have your special police permit with you. You have been picked up before for late and unusual hours and it got to be a nuisance, so you finally got yourself a special permit. Now you can walk and whistle where you wish, hands in your pockets, heels striking the pavement in a slow, easy tempo. This has been going on since you were sixteen years old. You’re now twenty-five, and four hours a night is still enough sleep.

“With That Moon Language” – Hafiz

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?

Translation by Daniel Ladinsky